Konkes 2015

Journalism Studies
ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE, RUMOUR AND TRUTH

SEEKING
Claire Konkes & Libby Lester
To cite this article: Claire Konkes & Libby Lester (2015): INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE, RUMOUR
AND TRUTH SEEKING, Journalism Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2015.1089182
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1089182
Published online: 01 Oct 2015.
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Download by: [Stockholm University Library] Date: 06 October 2015, At: 05:30
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE, RUMOUR
AND TRUTH SEEKING
When conspiracy theories become news
Claire Konkes and Libby Lester
Conspiracy theories can no longer be consigned to the fringes of media; they are a feature of news
and journalism and can be defined as attempts to find causal explanations for events in covert plots
Downloaded by [Stockholm University Library] at 05:30 06 October 2015
rather than more prosaic processes. Often a pejorative label, journalists know that conspiracies can
be sites for significant news-making. This empirical study explores the conditions and practices that
lead to conspiracy theories entering news narratives. It focuses on the intense news coverage of a
child sexual crime in Hobart, Tasmania that became a conspiracy theory involving the highest levels
of government and the judiciary. It examines how Hobart’s Mercury newspaper sourced its stories
and finds that the conspiracy theory gained traction when official statements were deemed unsa-
tisfactory and journalists sought other perspectives which enabled critics, including the newspaper,
to attack the Tasmanian Government.
KEYWORDS child sexual crimes; conspiracy theories; journalism practice; politics; public
debate
Introduction
The label “conspiracy theory” delegitimises an argument, interpretation or narrative
by labelling it as irrational or misinformed and not based on logical interpretation of fact
(Clarke 2002; Coady 2003). In the newsroom, conspiracy theory is effectively equivalent
to a four-letter word (Chomsky 2005), and scholarly analysis of conspiracy theories in
public discourse is rare (Husting and Orr 2007). In the existing literature, conspiracy theories
are associated with less-educated, more socially disenfranchised people who consume mar-
ginal media, such as sub-culture magazines and blogs (Birchall 2011; Stempel, Hargrove,
and Stempel 2007). However, conspiracy theories are increasingly recognised as a
feature of mainstream news (Byford 2011; Husting and Orr 2007), which suggests that a
wider part of the population is seeking alternative explanations and alternative sources
of news. As such, the rise of a conspiracy in news may provide insight into a shift in
news practices (Coleman, Morrison, and Anthony 2012).
This article aims to contribute to the understanding of this feature of news media and
public debate by examining the journalistic logic of pursuing what could be described as a
conspiracy theory. Its empirical focus is the intensive news coverage of a high-profile crim-
inal matter in the southern Australian state of Tasmania between 2010 and 2012, which was
notable for the demands for greater transparency and accountability it involved. Through
analysis of news content and interviews with key media, political and legal actors, it exam-
ines the communication strategies aimed at responding to public interest and controlling
Journalism Studies, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1089182
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
2 CLAIRE KONKES AND LIBBY LESTER
news flow, and teases out the elements that contributed to the crystallisation of a criminal
matter into a conspiracy theory.
News and Conspiracy

Jovan Byford (2011) usefully distinguishes between the terms “conspiracy” and “con-
spiracy theory”, arguing that the former is commonly used to signify “the joining together
of two or more individuals and their acting in collusion”, and the latter as “an explanation,
either speculative or evidence based, which attributes the causes of an event to a conspi-
racy or a plot” (Byford 2011, 20–21). Conspiracy theories can be described as explanations
that emerge in response to unsatisfactory official explanations (McCauley and Jacques
1979) which, Clarke (2002) notes, result from a tendency to blame people’s actions over
other more plausible, but prosaic, explanations. One difference between conspiracy and
conspiracy theories is the tendency of the latter to focus not on the actions of individuals,
but on the “secretive machinations of power” (Fenster 1999, 63). For the purposes of this
article, a conspiracy theory is a speculative explanation for an event that involves elite indi-
viduals secretly colluding for their interests, rather than the public interest.
For journalists, a conspiracy, like a scandal, begins with “imperfect knowledge” that
may “penetrate the mystery behind events which are already publically known”
(Tiffen 1999, 33). The emergence of a conspiracy theory challenges journalistic practice,
especially skills in research and verification. In an increasingly fragmented media environ-
ment, the emergence of a rumour and speculation also tests a news organisation’s prepa-
redness to be first, fast but flawed rather than well-researched and accurate (Gowing 2009).
This dilemma is not new. Sorting out what is known and unknown, fact or rumour, concei-
vable or absurd, possible but frustratingly unverifiable, have long been quotidian editorial
conundrums. There can be a lot of news value in an emerging scandal or conspiracy. Often
beginning with rumour, it can create the tantalising tension between those seeking visi-
bility and those seeking to control revelation (Entman 2012; Lester and Hutchins 2012)
and in these types of contests, leaking information can be part of the “explicit strategy”
of individuals who understand the power of mediatised visibility (Thompson 2005, 31).
The challenge for journalists is to pursue the rumours without falling for the false
speculation. After all, journalists do not have to buy into a conspiracy fully to investigate
claims (Eldridge and Reilly 2003). As a staple of journalistic practice, distinguishing what
is a conspiracy theory with no grounding in truth from a conspiracy based on verifiable
information is difficult. However, as Watergate and other news events with the suffix
“gate” attest, liberal democracies can accommodate real conspiracies. Also claims of collu-
sion are not entirely improbable. As Michael Parenti notes:
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s
a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” … Where else would people
of power get together? … Indeed, they meet in rooms … And, yes, they consciously plot—
although they call it “planning” and “strategising”—and they do so in great secrecy, often
resisting all efforts at public disclosure. (Parenti 1996, 174)
Conspiracy theories in the news can be regarded as efforts to question social hierar-
chies (Swami and Coles 2010) or rational scepticism about official accounts (Husting and Orr
2007), and they can reveal anomalies, inconsistencies or ambiguities in official versions of
events (Jolley and Douglas 2014a, 2014b). These contests frequently challenge the
INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE, RUMOUR AND TRUTH SEEKING 3
legitimacy of individuals and organisations that can trigger a crisis of communication for
social and political actors (McLean 2014). As such, conspiracy theories can be locations
for investigating how effectively news organisations represent or challenge the communi-
cation strategies of the powerful. However, Claire Birchall (2011) links the rise of conspiracy
theories to an increasing expectation for transparency in public life that can misinterpret
the need or right to privacy and discretion as signalling deceit and argues that it is a
false binary to present secrecy with nefarious activities and transparency as synonymous
with honesty. In this context, conspiracy theories in media have been linked to negative
social outcomes, such as the decline of public trust in governments (Einstein and Glick
2014), influencing voting intentions (Jolley and Douglas 2014a; Sutton and Douglas
2014) and the movement away from vaccinating children (Jolley and Douglas 2014b).
Despite criticisms of the idealisation of journalism’s role in public life as the Fourth
Estate (see Schultz 1998), journalists are engaged in “accountability work” (Djerf-Pierre,
Ekström, and Johansson 2013) and “sense-making” (Gamson 1992; McNair 2013; Silverman
2006). In that capacity, news is a “reasoning institution that aggressively pursues, rigorously
tests, and compellingly renders reasons that satisfy” (Ettema 2007, 145). As such, efforts to
make sense of an emerging and controversial issue require both journalistic inquiry and a
response by sources that satisfy. Allegations of wrong-doing and dismissing allegations as
conspiracy theories can be seen as contests for legitimacy. Denial, personal attack, and dis-
missal of others’ views and concerns are features of mediatised conspiracy theories, and
legitimate areas of research into the relationship between media, power and public knowl-
edge (Pelkmans and Machold 2011). Conspiracy theories in news narratives can reveal
something of the impasse between the ideals of transparency and the limitations of
news media to shine a light into areas deemed to be of national security, under sub
judice or commercial-in-confidence. While these limitations on public knowledge are
both commonplace and often contentious, communications around these matters can
still lead to controversy. When official sources attempt to keep tight control on information
“secrecy and conspiracy became the key major news themes” (Eldridge and Reilly 2003,
149). Thus, the vacuum created by a refusal to talk to journalists can lead reporters to
seek alternative voices or put their own thematic spins on an issue when frustrated by offi-
cial rhetoric or silence (Callaghan and Schnell 2001; Harsin 2012). When such rumours
include claims that a group of powerful people have acted deliberately to conceal their
actions, then such rumours can also be said to be a conspiracy theory.
The crimes associated with paedophilia have long been associated with the idea of
organised paedophile rings, which includes the idea of the social elites using their power
to conceal their illegal activities (Jenkins 2001). In recent years, journalists in Britain and Aus-
tralia have reported on the extent to which allegations of collusion to organise and hide
such crimes have revealed significant political and institutional malfeasance. For instance
Middleton et al., writing about The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional
Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, observe:
While there are some who will consign accounts of politically connected organised abuse
… to the category of “conspiracy theory”, the reality is that our world is being progress-
ively acquainted with the fact that such examples are repeatedly surfacing. (Middleton
et al. 2014, 24)
In Britain, the investigations into organised child abuse have revealed the extent to
which the historical tendency to not act on claims of child sexual assault compounded in a
“conspiracy of silence” that protected the perpetrators and those who chose not to report
them (Berelowitz et al. 2012). The sexual crime against a child that contained allegations of
a cover-up provides an ideal case study to investigate how journalists and their sources
approach a story with the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory.
Background: The Case of the 12-year-old Girl

In late 2009, the independent Tasmanian parliamentarian, Terry Martin, was arrested
for paying for sex with a 12-year-old child. Shortly after, another man, Gary Devine, and the
girl’s mother were arrested for advertising the child as an 18-year-old sex worker. In 2010,
the Tasmanian Supreme Court heard that the child was a ward of the state when she was
advertised as “Angela 18, new in town” in the adult services section of Hobart’s daily news-
paper, the Mercury. The court heard that over four weeks, as many as 100 men paid $100 to
have sex with the child—some paying an extra $50 to not use a condom. Both Devine and
the girl’s mother pleaded guilty and received 10-year prison terms. The day after Devine’s
sentencing, the Mercury reported that Tasmania Police had launched a “man hunt” based
on a list of suspects that was “central to the investigation” (McKay 2010).
Calls for more arrests and an independent inquiry into the case continued. The state’s
opposition party, the Tasmanian Liberals, maintained criticism of the incumbent Labor Gov-
ernment and, in particular, the Minister for Children, Lin Thorp. A full and independent
inquiry headed by the Commissioner for Children, Paul Mason, into the circumstances
that led to the girl’s abuse began in May 2010 (Mason 2010), but only continued the con-
troversy. Mason’s report was delayed, received amid controversy and, when his three-year
contract was not renewed a few months later, he was portrayed as “dumped” because he
had criticised the Government and, in particular, the Minister for Children and the state’s
child protection services.
In September 2010, the Saturday Mercury’s front page (Neales 2010a) revealed that
“more than 100 men” involved in the crimes against the girl were “unlikely to face
court”. A few days later, leaked reports alleged that at least two police officers were on a
list of men suspected to have paid for sex with the child (Bester 2010). The decision
made national headlines and dominated the front pages of the Mercury for several days,
during which time the figure of “about 100 men” inexplicably jumped to as many as 204.
Despite the controversy and confusion around this decision, it was nearly a week
before the then Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Tim Ellis, agreed to be
interviewed about his decision not to pursue more arrests (Ward 2010). In this interview,
Ellis said his decision was based on advice that a conviction was unlikely because there
was an absence of admissible evidence and Tasmanian legislation had a defence of
“mistake as to age” in relation to sexual offences against children. Ellis said the defence
meant that those accused of having sex with the girl would be able to argue that they
had reasonable grounds for mistaking the age of the child because: (1) she was advertised
as being 18 years of age; (2) her physical appearance was of a person who looked much
older than 12; and (3) the men had limited conversation with her generally in a darkened
room. Ellis said his decision was also informed by the child being unwilling to testify against
the men and that multiple trials were likely to be traumatic for her.
The idea that there was a “list” naming the alleged offenders became prominent in
the news and commentary about the case. On one hand, police using a list of names of
suspects, in this case compiled from both the records of calls made to Devine’s telephone
during the period that he was advertising the girl for sex, and a diary or notebook found in
Devine’s possession that contained jottings of names and times, was not unusual. As a list
of potential suspects, the DPP argued that it was of little forensic use as evidence of any
wrongdoing. As a list of suspects, it was not material that could be published without
the risk of defamation. However, the idea of there being some kind of “list” of people
who may have paid for sex with the girl became something tangible around which more
ambiguous suspicions crystallised.
The DPP also took the unusual step of having the eight-page Memorandum of Advice
prepared by his office published in the state’s three daily papers (Mercury, October 2, 2010).
This included a summary of the evidence of the seven men who admitted to sexual inter-
course with the girl in video interviews. Despite this apparent act of transparency, news
coverage continued to raise questions about why the politician Terry Martin was the
only man arrested when others were supposedly known to police. Central to this question-
ing was the so-called “list”. Despite a diary used by police in their investigations being men-
tioned in court when Devine was sentenced (Tasmania v Devine, Comments on Passing
Sentence, J. Evans, March 25, 2010) and a list also being mentioned in the front-page
story assuring the Tasmanian public that there would be more arrests, the DPP and Tasma-
nia Police were unequivocal in their denial that there was any “list” of names (Ward 2010).
In February 2011, the “dumped” Children’s Commissioner Mason, announced he
would stand against Minister Thorp in Tasmania’s Upper House elections. Mason’s cam-
paign against the Minister compounded her appearance as a minister incapable of
dealing with the controversy and the two embarked on a very personal contest for the
seat. By this stage, the Labor Government that had been in power for more than a
decade was declining in popularity after a number of scandals. Having borne the brunt
of media criticism of the Government’s handling of this matter, the Minister’s position
appeared untenable, but she lost her seat to another candidate, Tony Mulder, who also
ran as an Independent on a platform that included challenging the “dishonesty” of
the Labor Government and its “refusal” to remove the “mistake of age” (Neales 2011a).
Mason came third.
In November 2011, almost two years from when he was arrested, Martin faced the
Supreme Court in Hobart on three charges: indecent assault, sex with a young person
under 17 and producing child exploitation material. His trial revealed he was “singled
out” for prosecution because, while the other alleged clients had told police they only
had brief contact with the girl, Martin had admitted to police that the child had visited
his home for several hours during the day where Martin had photographed her. Martin’s
defence at trial was that he had honestly and reasonably believed she was at least 17 as
stated in a newspaper advertisement. His lawyer also argued that the prescribed medi-
cation Martin took to treat Parkinson’s Disease had caused hypersexualised behaviour
that interfered with his judgement. Martin was found guilty of two of the three charges
and received a 10-month, wholly suspended, sentence.
In its letters-to-the-editor page, the Mercury represented public sentiment on Martin’s
conviction as symptomatic of wider distrust of the state’s legal and political systems that
included a concern that Martin had been singled out for prosecution by a Government
that had somehow influenced the prosecution process (Mercury 2011). The paper also
ran a front-page story based on claims by child protection activist Steve Fisher that
Tasmania was a “paedophile paradise” because of the lack of convictions in this case
(Dawtrey 2011). In February 2012, Martin appeared again before the Supreme Court and
pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a collection of child pornography that police found
in his home as part of their investigation in 2009 and received a non-custodial sentence.
Despite a significant response by authorities to the crimes, which included significant
prison terms for the two adults who sold the girl, the Government was continually depicted
as being unwilling to act on this matter. At some point the criticism of failing to act and a
lack of transparency shifted to allegations of deliberate cover-up to protect high-profile
people involved in the scandal and criticism. This raises the question as to whether there
was more to the story or if the mediatised calls for further action, in the words of the
DPP, were “to satisfy a blood lust lynch mob mentality that’s being stirred up by people
with certain agendas” (Ward 2010)?
The Analytical Approach, Method and Data

Our analysis below follows Davis (2007, 185), who argues that when dealing with
small groups of professionals, the most realistic methods “involve interviews, content analy-
sis, participant observation, and the use of other survey data”.
Hobart’s only metropolitan newspaper, the Mercury, was chosen for analysis because
it consistently covered the case. The paper was also a specific locus because the advertise-
ment for the girl was published in its classified section. The national broadcaster’s local
radio station, 936 ABC Hobart, also covered the case on its hourly news bulletins and in
lengthier forums such as morning talk-back radio. Tasmania also has two commercial tele-
vision networks that broadcast nightly news and least 20 commercial and community radio
stations. However, collecting a complete record of texts from radio, like television, is difficult
in terms of accessing full transcripts compared to collecting data from the electronic
archives of newspapers (Chancer 2005; Lester 2010). The weblog Tasmanian Times was
also a site where the conspiracy theory was discussed. While the content analysis uses
the Mercury’s coverage as a dataset, coverage by the ABC and the Tasmanian Times is
used to triangulate the findings and augment discussion.
We first examined 328 texts taken from the Mercury from the time of Martin’s arrest in
October 2009 until he left the Supreme Court in February 2012. The stories were selected
when they specifically referred to the crimes against the child at the centre of the study,
rather than, for instance, child protection more broadly. Texts included news reports,
letters-to-the-editor, opinion pieces and leaders (following Ericson, Baranek, and Chan
1989; Greer and McLaughlin 2012; Hall et al. 1978).
Interviewees were selected using “judgmental sampling” (Robson 2002, 265) and
were chosen because they were involved in the case as legal, political or advocacy pro-
fessionals. Thirty journalists were approached and 10 agreed to be interviewed. Sixteen
lawyers, and both government and non-government child protection advocates, and gov-
ernment employees within the policing and judicial sector were contacted. Of this group,
10 agreed to be interviewed. Anonymity and de-identification were explicitly requested by
all of the journalists and most of the other sources, and it was granted. The exception were
three people whose unique roles, such as that of the DPP, Tim Ellis, made identification
unavoidable.
An initial count of the monthly occurrence of news coverage revealed four distinct
“phases” based on spikes in media flow (see Figure 1). The “phases” of news coverage were:
(1) The Crime phase (11 months) triggered by the arrest of Martin in October 2009.
FIGURE 1
Total Mercury newspaper texts (October 2009 to February 2012)
(2) The Justice phase (4 months) began in late September 2010 with the announcement
that there would be no further arrests.
(3) The Politics phase (5 months) began in February 2011 with rumours that Mason
would contest Minister Thorp’s electoral seat and finished shortly after the May
2010 election.
(4) The Trial phase (4 months) began with the appearance of Martin before the Supreme
Court in Hobart in November 2011 and concluded when he left the Supreme Court
for the last time in February 2012.
These “phases” capture the peaks in news flows and indicate that each new wave of
reporting was triggered by external events rather than newsroom investigations (Figure 1).
In all four phases, news reporting and commentary declined or stopped entirely until the
next wave.
In order to understand how a criminal matter became so politicised, a frame analysis
was undertaken (Iyengar 1991; McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver 1997). A suitable approach
was determined by observing how the crimes and the official response to them in this
case were represented in Tasmania as symptomatic or symbolic of wider political and
social problems in the state rather than a single, unusual event (Cavanagh 2007). David
Altheide’s (1997) approach to problem frames usefully identifies how news coverage fre-
quently applies problem frames to an issue or event with a “general conclusion that some-
thing is wrong” to which blame is applied and, finally, a correction is prescribed. The
problem frames were coded for as “government problem”, “social problem”, “legal
problem”, “system problem” and “need for law reform”. A detailed analysis of this aspect
of the study and how framing contributed to the politicisation of this criminal matter
can be found in Konkes and Lester (2015).
However, the analysis did not fully explain the rise of the conspiracy theory associ-
ated with this episode in Tasmania. With the rise of conspiracies linked to distrust and dis-
satisfaction with official statements and outcomes (Birchall 2011; Eldridge and Reilly 2003),
we examined how journalists and their sources framed their responses to official announce-
ments in terms of distrust and dissatisfaction. Drawing upon Ettema’s (2007, 145) obser-
vation that news reporting requires not only reason-giving, but also giving reasons that
satisfy, the coding for the frame analysis included observing the implied “satisfaction”
with these statements. Coding provided for four types of “satisfaction” that sought to
capture not only the contrast between general support and criticism, but also the more
extreme elements of criticism from those supporting or criticising the Government and
other elites (Table 1).
Single texts were often found to contain multiple and competing frames (Gamson
and Modigliani 1989; Pan et al. 2001). Frames were counted each time they occurred,
which resulted in more than one frame being counted in some stories. The resulting
dataset showed how journalistic framing shifted from being about injustice and frustration
with legal decision-making to reporting that suggested there was a cover-up involving the
highest levels of the judiciary and parliament (Figure 2).
A sense of injustice dominated throughout the first half of the study period as the
court cases unfolded. That is to say, the sense that legislation and court procedures had
failed to ensure justice was served prevailed and the Government and other authorities
outside the courtroom were framed as unwilling or incompetent, but not corrupt.
Notably, the “injustice” frame continued to dominate when the DPP announced there
would be no further prosecutions and the idea of there being a cover-up first emerged.
The point of transition, when the “injustice” frame all but disappeared and the “secrecy”
frame ascended, occurred in the Political phase when the former Children’s Commissioner
took on Minister Thorp in election in the first half of 2011. It is here that reporting and com-
mentary alluding to secrecy and lack of transparency dominated. The “injustice” frame
returned when Martin appeared in court at the end of 2011. The trajectories of these
frames indicate that the “Political” phase was not only a time of particularly personal con-
frontations between a popular former statutory officer and an unpopular minister in a gov-
ernment that was sliding in public regard, but also the locus for the conspiracy theory to
take hold.
TABLE 1
Coding for “outcome” frames (October 2009 to February 2012)
Frame Response to outcome Example

Moral Criticism of opponents as misinformed “Such naming and shaming would be
panic or otherwise attempting to push their dangerous in a country where known or
own agenda suspected pedophiles … have been
harassed by angry mobs” (Mercury 2010)
Support General satisfaction with the official “The last word on this matter should rightfully
outcome without criticism go to Giddings … Why is she the only one
who gets this?” (Barns 2010)
Injustice General dissatisfaction, but without “Mr Mason is also disappointed the
reference to political interference Government has not acted on his request
for greater powers for the Commissioner for
Children” (Neales 2010b)
Secrecy Dissatisfaction with reference to “‘Who is the Government trying to protect
political interference/cover-up here with its secrecy, the minister or the
girl?’ Mr Hodgman said” (Neales 2010b)
FIGURE 2
Outcome frames (October 2009 to February 2012)
From Controversy to Conspiracy

In the early stages of this case, conspiratorial thinking was limited to some conjecture
about Martin’s position as the only man arrested and, to some extent, the problems Mason
had preparing his report. However, this soon shifted with the decision to not prosecute that
was leaked in September 2010, which triggered the “Justice phase”. Despite the contro-
versy and confusion around this decision, it was nearly a week before the Tasmanian
DPP, Tim Ellis, agreed to be interviewed about his decision (Ward 2010). It was his only inter-
view at the time and it was an ideal opportunity for him to explain the decision. Interviewer
Airlie Ward began the interview by trying to clarify the number of men estimated to have
paid to have sex with the girl:
TIM ELLIS: Not sure where the 200 figure came from. The 100 was somewhat of an esti-
mate; the figure might be somewhere between those two. In terms of contact, really all
there was, was an estimate and some telephone numbers on mainly Devine’s telephone,
which were traced back.
AIRLIE WARD: So can we clarify there then as well, was there a list of clients?
TIM ELLIS: No. There was no list at all. There was no diary of any forensic use. There were
some scribblings and some times and so but absolutely no list of clients with names or
anything like that. (Ward 2010)
The disparity between 100 and 204 men was the difference of the initial police inves-
tigation—that established that at least 100 men had paid for the girl—that informed the
charges against Devine and the girl’s mother. The police investigation or “man hunt”
that continued after Devine and the mother were sentenced increased the estimation to
204 men. The reason for this discrepancy in numbers was not explicitly explained nor
was the difference between a list of suspects drawn from phone records and jottings
and a list of known sex offenders. In his interview for this study, Ellis said he agreed to the
Stateline interview with Airlie Ward and to have the Memorandum published the next day
because the controversy around his decision had descended into a conspiracy theory:
This office was somehow involved in cover-ups or was incompetent or that the work we
do is protecting paedophiles, when it was not our work at all. So that direction of the
debate was personally stressful because I place a lot of pride in the work we do and
the work of this office is done with a lot of integrity and courage. I take a lot of pride in
my own integrity, so I think that is why it was stressful because I knew that everywhere,
buzzing around in conversations and in the media, that people were ill-informed and
were having a media blitz that was based on misinformation and that by publishing
what I did that it would bring the debate back to reality. I did not expect it to be
perfect and that I would bring everyone around to my side, and I did not expect everyone
to say “now we’ve seen it, we agree with him”; I just wanted it better understood. (Tim Ellis,
interview, 23 October 2012)
It would be false to draw the line between those who contested or accepted Ellis’s
decision as the difference of those who understood the law and those who did not. Of
note here were comments by former Tasmanian Liberal Attorney General and founding
commissioner of the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission, Sir Max Bingham, who
told the Mercury that he doubted the claims that there was scant evidence to secure
more prosecutions:
“An independent review is the answer because, as an old friend once said, for evil to
prevail it is necessary only for good men to do nothing,” Sir Max said last night. “I’d be
surprised if out of the 100 cases there weren’t at last half-a-dozen that could be made
to hang together, at least to prove society’s morality on this issue still prevails”. (Neales
2010a)
Similarly, one senior lawyer said in an interview for this study:
I was a bit surprised that a little bit more effort was not put into talking to a few more
people, so I guess I share that to a certain extent and I did have a funny feeling that
there was a lot of activity going on and then suddenly it was only Terry Martin who
emerged and I wondered why that was so, just as an ordinary citizen, and I thought
obviously the police have dedicated a lot of resources to this and I know they have
spoken to however many and had narrowed it down to the few who were prepared to
sign the statement … I was a little surprised that the investigation did not seem more
comprehensive and come up with a few more people given the number that seem to
have been involved. (Lawyer, interview, 2012)
A Government maintaining some distance from a judicial decision by limiting its
comments in media combined with a highly controlled communications strategy from
the judiciary ensured that the opportunities to make sense of a difficult and contested
legal matter were, at times, lost. One explanation for the poor communication between
these two sectors in this case was a culture of antagonism between lawyers and journalists
that has been noted in other jurisdictions (e.g. Breit 2011; Gies 2008). One lawyer described
the frustration with court reporting in terms of news production:
I do accept that there are a lot of constraints such as trying to summarise things, trying to
squash something into a very confined space and time. I know they are subject to sub-edi-
torial fiddling, I know that people who … do the reporting are not responsible for the
idiotic headlines, but generally there just seems to be a high level of inaccuracy.
(Lawyer, interview, 2012)
Another lawyer said of court reporters:

They probably don’t do a bad job in the sense of inaccuracies in reporting and they are
certainly not as vicious in Tasmania as they are in certain mainland tabloids and shock
jock programmes. Having a pretty comfortable relationship with the media helps …
[but] you still get the odd mistake. (Lawyer, interview, 2012)
Adding to these complaints was expressions of frustration with the superficial under-
standing of law and courtroom processes shown in news reporting, although some inter-
viewees were more sympathetic to the difficulties of interpreting the law for a general
audience. A third lawyer defended journalists:
What, do you want to make them all go and do a law degree? I think the court reporters do
know a lot … so, I don’t blame the journalists … They sometimes have problems with
reporting complex cases, but who doesn’t? I think overall they get it right … I think the
headlines are probably worse than the story. (Lawyer, interview, 2012)
This lawyer also reflected on the reasons why so many legal professionals express
disdain for reporters:
I think they don’t understand. They think that anything they say to a journalist is going to
appear on the front page. They don’t understand on the record/off the record. Secondly, I
think there is arrogance, you know: “If people don’t understand it, too bad”. (Lawyer, inter-
view, 2012)
In this environment, Ellis’s strategy was to keep his communications brief about this
case and he did not publicly discuss the case again until Martin’s trial in late 2011. As he said:
I tell the local media that I am not their press officer and “I am not telling you what’s
coming up in court, you need to be in court to report it and I am not telling you what hap-
pened in court afterwards, because it’s your job to send reporters there if you want to
report on what’s in court” … There is no place in my budget to do the press’s job for it.
(Tim Ellis, interview, 23 October 2012)
Without a media officer to field queries, Ellis dealt directly with journalists and said his
relationship with journalists was “not something I lose a great deal of sleep over”:
I am not a public figure, nor am I aiming to be one … there should only be one voice
speaking about it and that is a relief for my staff who are not obliged to make any
comment … It seems to me that if you get a press officer, the press officer runs you,
rather than you run them. (Tim Ellis, interview, 23 October 2012)
The DPP’s preference to deal with media on his own terms can be seen in his decision
to respond to a post on the politically influential (Hutchins 2007) weblog Tasmanian Times
after lawyer Bronwyn Williams summed up the conspiracy theory that had become estab-
lished by the time Martin appeared in court:
Some have expressed an opinion that Terry Martin was prosecuted for “political” reasons,
but the suggested victimisation of Mr Martin pales into insignificance next to the much
larger conspiracy—the conspiracy to dispatch these despicable crimes as expeditiously
as possible from the public arena. Protection is being offered, but I’m not sure it’s
being offered to children. (Williams 2011)
Ellis responded to Williams the following day, in which he began:

I am truly tired of every self-styled expert on law having their views published and con-
cluding in a personal attack on me. If I’m not accused of picking on one person
because he was prominent or for some other spurious reason, I am accused of covering
up some Very Important People who are on a “list” (which doesn’t, and never has,
existed. I don’t know how many times I have to say this). (Ellis 2011)
In his interview for this study, the DPP said he replied to Williams because he was
“ticked off that it was the same ridiculous conspiracy stuff being churned over by
someone pretending to know better”:
I could have ignored it, but I think I pretty well had had enough and I was pretty stressed
out about the whole thing and when I saw the spot-fire break out, I thought I would put it
out rather than grind my teeth about it … I call it the conspirator’s website. They are a
small bunch who talk to each other so it was unusual that, but I was just fed up … So I
did it mainly to get it off my chest. (Tim Ellis, interview, 23 October 2012)
While Ellis’s decision to be the “only voice speaking” may have ensured there would
be no further commentary between his announcement and Martin’s trials, the emergence
of Mason as a political contender in the interim ensured that there was another opportunity
for conspiracy theorising to resurface in the news.
The appointment of a Minister for Children in early 2010 created a lightning rod for
criticisms. The Government’s treatment of Mason before he lost his job as Children’s Com-
missioner established Mason as a single challenger to the Minister for Children. His role as a
former statutory officer and independent investigator of the matter positioned him as an
authority, not least because he knew information about this case that was being kept
out from public knowledge. The election for the seat of Rumney in May 2011 was a political
contest, but it could also be understood as a moment when the altruistic, personal and pro-
fessional agendas of two people crystallised in a public competition. In the interviews for
this study, three journalists described the feud between Mason and Thorp as a distraction
that provided journalists with stories that did little to serve public deliberation about the
wider issues raised by these crimes. It was noted that Mason’s willingness to speak to repor-
ters and his usefulness as an outspoken critic of the Government may have contributed to
his “dream run” with journalists, which also made him an ideal “stalking horse” for those
wanting to attack the Government. However, a journalist observed:
I think it is a mistake, or a danger, for people with a genuine issue to try and pursue it pol-
itically by standing for office. It is very hard to untangle in the public mind and in the mind
of journalists what the genuine issue is and what is someone just trying to get themselves
elected. [Child protection] is such a serious issue that it is probably better not to do it
through the prism of two politicians having a go at each other. (Journalist, interview, 2012)
The tension between these two players leading up to the election enabled journalists
and other commentators to continue to highlight Mason as the good man who was
“dumped” by an “embattled” Minister more interested in political survival than children
or political process. This positioning fed into the idea of a Government with something
to cover up. Throughout this phase, critics of the Government and advocates for insti-
tutional and legal reform found opportunities to put pressure on an increasingly unpopular
Government. In such a communication environment, rumours were floated and documents
were leaked which further contributed to the idea that there was a lack of transparency. For
instance, just days out from the election, the ABC obtained a 61-page leaked copy of
Mason’s report that revealed that lawyers acting on behalf of the girl were unable to
access her legal and departmental files and, further, that the Children’s Commissioner
had suspected that Tasmania Police had ignored claims by the extended family that the
girl was being prostituted (Ogilvie 2011). The Mercury (Neales 2011b) reported that Tasma-
nia Police denied they had any record of family members attending a police station to
report the abuse weeks before child protection workers raised the alarm. In these
reports, Mason said he had no reason to believe or disbelieve the family or the police.
A combination of highly mediatised disagreements between authorities and a lack of
satisfying answers to allegations made through the leaking of information began to crystal-
lise into the idea that there had been a cover-up. This process occurred at a time when calls
for a statutory body to investigate allegations of corruption in Tasmania had gained
momentum to the extent where a statutory body, Integrity Commission Tasmania, was
established (Bibby 2013). The first investigation by the newly formed Integrity Commission
Tasmania was an audit of Tasmania Police’s internal investigation after phone numbers
found during the investigation were linked to three police officers. The investigation
sought to establish whether the internal police investigation into the allegations had
involved a “willful cover-up or attempt to cover-up misconduct” and it found that, while
there was no cover-up, there were a number of deficiencies and systemic failings that
had “adversely affected the internal investigative process” (Integrity Commission Tasmania
2011, 16). Despite considerable public interest in the Commission and the case in question,
these investigations were not reported in the media.
When Martin eventually appeared before the Supreme Court to face charges, the
sense of a cover-up was an established element in the framing of this case in the
Mercury. While the newspaper reported his two trials without mentioning the alleged
cover-up, its letters-to-the-editor pages and online comments continued to discuss the
conspiracy:
One wonders what the odds are that once the new head of the Integrity Commission is
appointed … it will investigate the other men who had sex with the 12-year-old girl. If
justice is to be seen to be done in Tasmania, one prays the odds are not 100 to 1.
So Terry Martin is guilty. Now let’s have a look at all the others. There are sure to be some
people of public interest on the “list”.
If nobody else is prosecuted, is it reasonable to suggest that Terry Martin was prosecuted
not for what he did but for who he is? (Mercury 2011)
The idea of the “list” symbolised the public and journalistic confusion and curiosity
about the police investigation. It also stopped journalists doing the sense-making and
explanatory work required to clarify the facts of the matter. Learning the names on the “list”
may have answered the question of who was involved in the purchase of a child for sex, but
there were other questions to ask about how these crimes were able to occur. That is to say,
it was not just about the perpetrators, but also about the professional attitudes of those
who may have known or suspected the child was at risk of abuse. This shift in accountability
has been pivotal in recent examples of important institutional reflection about how child
sexual abuse can occur. The lack of further arrests in this case raised questions about
what attitudes and professional practices informed how police, and others involved with
the child, may have regarded the victim during her abuse and during the police investi-
gation. Mason alluded to these problems in his study when he noted this factor that con-
tributed to her abuse:
Police treatment of the absence/presence of consent in underage sex may have confused
and distracted Child Protection Services from the risk. (Mason 2010, 7)
This difficult task appeared to be overlooked because the challenge had been simpli-
fied into the search for a list of names that would scandalise Tasmanian politics and society
more generally. In the absence of better communications between either the DPP or Tas-
mania Police and journalists, reporters were reliant on leaked information to supplement
their incomplete knowledge and in the absence of official explanations that satisfied, jour-
nalists looked for alternative explanations. The result was a conspiracy theory that appeared
to simplify the problem and allow the “conspiracy of silence” that allows child sexual exploi-
tation to be institutionally overlooked (Berelowitz et al. 2012) to remain unchallenged by
journalists.
This observation was not lost on academic Natasha Cica who, in an essay on social
justice in Tasmania, observed:
I am saying it’s all been a very bad look, not helped by the tone of much discussion sur-
rounding the failure by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Tim Ellis, to prosecute any of
the other men. Ellis has proffered a legally tenable argument in his own defence, based on
the likelihood of successful prosecution … but the debates danced around some deeper
issues about power and process in Tasmania—including their relationship to gender. (Cica
2013, 16–17)
Conclusion
A direct result of this controversial case was amendments to the state’s Criminal Code
to include a “no age” defence of 13 years and the consolidation of other provisions to
ensure prosecutions for sexual crimes against young people will be less complex. The ques-
tion of whether the decision to not pursue further arrests was informed by the difficulty to
secure a prosecution or by the names of those on the “list” of likely suspects remains unan-
swered. It was beyond the scope of this study to ascertain the extent to which the conspi-
racy theory was grounded in truth, but as this paper has discussed, there were certainly
details about this case that warranted further examination.
In this case, the conspiracy theory began with the controversial decision to not
pursue further prosecutions that crystallised around the idea of there being a “list” that
was mentioned in court and in the news, but then denied by the DPP and Tasmania
Police. The sense that aspects of this case were being hidden was perpetuated in the
very public feud between Mason and Thorp, which included a further leaking of reports into
the media closer to election day. Finally, the idea that Martin, as a known government critic,
had been used as a scapegoat further was further sedimented in both the op-ed and letters
sections of the Mercury, and in commentary and online comments on the Tasmanian Times
weblog. Finally, this case occurred during a wider debate about political integrity in Tasma-
nia, which further positioned the treatment of this criminal matter as a test case for insti-
tutional integrity.
Throughout this case, journalists had a choice: they could accept the explanations
given to them by the DPP and Tasmania Police, or they could keep looking for alternative
accounts to supply “reasons that satisfy” (Ettema 2007). In this case, journalists did both. In
the search for reasons that satisfied, journalists were met with controlled, and even obfus-
cating, communications strategies from Government and other officials that appeared to
miss the difference between questions aimed at clarification and those aimed at account-
ability. The former does not imply fault, only elucidation; the latter implies error, and
requires admissions of culpability. These communications strategies missed the opportu-
nity to use media to explain and inform. In turn, this idea of a cover-up involving the
highest echelons of government and the judiciary also served to distract journalists from
seeing this case as a story of political integrity rather than a story about the need for impor-
tant institutional reflection. For instance, journalists may have examined police attitudes to
allegations that young people are involved in commercial sexual exploitation, which both
the Integrity Commission Tasmania (2011) and Mason (2010) had indicated was a problem.
Instead, journalists appeared to pursue a more political story, where there was a ready
supply of government critics to act as source, which resulted in coverage that was over-
whelmingly critical of official outcomes that contributed to a criminal matter being
framed as a problem of political integrity.
When mediatised rumour is met with denial and journalists are able to find alterna-
tive explanations from those competing for visibility and legitimacy, there is a whiff of con-
spiracy theory needing only a little more verification to be a news-breaking scandal. In this
case, to dismiss the controversy as a conspiracy theory based on misinformation and poor
journalistic practice was to also risk overlooking the weaknesses in Tasmania’s legislation,
policy and institutional practice that allowed for the problem of child sexual exploitation.
However, it appears that the process of sense-making and accountability being undertaken
by journalists and their sources was utilised by those who wanted to oust an unpopular
Minister and criticise a Government in decline and who, therefore, had the most to gain
from the sense that a cover-up had occurred.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
FUNDING
This work was supported by the University of Tasmania’s Institute for the Study of
Social Change.
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Libby Lester, Journalism, Media and Communications, University of Tasmania, Australia.
E-mail: libby.lester@utas.edu.au. ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1046-2412

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INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE, RUMOUR AND TRUTH

Claire Konkes & Libby Lester

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